


but you (you set my world on fire)

by izukillme



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Akashi Masaomi's A+ Parenting, Akashi Shiori's A+ Parenting, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drunk Sex, F/M, Fatherhood, Gen, I am so sorry Timb, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Instability, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Please Be careful, Pregnancy, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, This was supposed to be crack, but it's meant to be that way, i love that tag lmaoooo, it's sort of fragmented in terms of the timeline, this contains so so much triggering content i-, this is so fucked up, yes it's Shiori
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25379905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izukillme/pseuds/izukillme
Summary: Akashi Masaomi falls in love exactlytwothree times.
Relationships: Akashi Masaomi & Akashi Seijuurou, Akashi Masaomi & Akashi Shiori, Akashi Masaomi & Izuki Shun & Takao Kazunari, Akashi Masaomi/Akashi Shiori, Akashi Masaomi/Izuki Sora, Akashi Masaomi/Original Character(s), Akashi Masaomi/Takao Nami, Akashi Seijuurou & Akashi Shiori, Akashi Seijuurou & Izuki Shun & Takao Kazunari, Takao Nami/Takao Haruki
Comments: 48
Kudos: 14





	1. Masaomi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PumpkinPieTimb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinPieTimb/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for you, sweet Timb!! the next 2 chapters are suuuper heavy but I swear the fluff will come at the end. uwu love ya!

_Your fire set my heart alight and forced it to crumble in on itself._

* * *

His first love is called Sora.

She is classically beautiful, enough to have passed for a shrine-maiden with her long dark hair and twinkling blackish-grey eyes. But no one can mistake her for a _yamato nadeshiko_ when she cocks her guns and shoots you in the head with a bright smile and a word-play that would’ve sounded silly in any other circumstance.

The daughter of a powerful _yakuza_ family, Masaomi meets her when she comes to close a deal with his father. Twenty years old and still innocent to the world’s cruel hand, he is instantly taken; she, not so much. But as the years pass and the meetings with his father grow ever more frequent, she stays for hours after the stipulated time, simply laughing and talking with him in the expansive gardens of the Akashi estate. Melting her icy heart isn’t easy, but Masaomi peels at it with the little toothpick of his warmth and slowly pushes past the towering walls she’s built around herself. 

It’s she, five years after they had met, who chooses to leave her family for his sake. She cuts all ties to them and moves permanently into his house, helping him manage his accounts (he’d always been terrible at those) and slowly but surely becoming a bigger part of his life. They’re husband and wife in all but name, and when she gets down on her knees with a ring, Masaomi doesn’t care for a minute that it’s traditionally his role to propose. 

Not long after, she is with child. Masaomi hopes for a daughter he can one day walk down the aisle. But as it sinks in that _he and Sora are having a child,_ the gender stops mattering _._ He’s going to father a child, a beautiful one that’s all their own.

A month into the pregnancy, she disappears. Though she had left her birth family, she was still raised as a princess of the underworld, and knows all too well how to vanish without a trace. Masaomi searches long and hard, but never finds her.

And so it is that his first heartbreak lies in the unreachable heavens, where only birds can soar and men can but watch them with the painful desire to take flight too.

* * *

His second love is Nami.

She’s unconventional in every sense of the word. Born poor, but always cheerful and kind. Unfeminine, preferring to dress in shorts and tank tops with brightly dyed hair as opposed to the formal gowns and suits of upper-echelon women. Never afraid to speak her mind, never caring what others thought of her, she sails through life like it’s a breeze. Where Sora was bitingly sarcastic like a breath of cool air, Nami is refreshingly joyful like ocean waves lapping around his ankles. 

It’s a month after Sora that he meets her. He loses himself in her at first, trying to forget the sky by drowning in the sea; a drunken night at a bar results in an unprecedented pregnancy, and Masaomi’s parents insist they get engaged because “it would look bad if she were to go to the press”. (He had strongly suspected on seeing how much they loved her vivacious personality that they wanted him to find happiness in her instead, but had never voiced it.) 

However, as Nami’s belly swells further and further, Masaomi finds himself starting to float in the ocean he’d hoped to drown in. Her laughter soon starts to brighten his dull days, and he looks less and less at the photograph of himself and Sora on his dresser. There’s no forgetting his sky no matter how hard he tried, but he can have a sea in his world too, couldn’t he? And for a while, he is the horizon who kisses the sea as the sun sets and rises each day. 

It’s mere days before the birth of Masaomi’s second child that Nami disappears, too. Any trail of her simply vanishes like the waves washing footprints from the sand.

And so it is that his second heartbreak lies beneath churning waves like the corpse of a sunken ship, her ribs buried in sand and lost to time. 

* * *

His third love is not a love at all. 

Shiori is fiercely bright. Her kisses burn, sending heat all through Masaomi’s body and leaving his tongue tasting like ashes. She is a sun, an unkind, blistering sun that left Masaomi’s tender skin aching and yet calling for more.

She is all he has anymore. 

(He had said she burned once, when they were barely fourteen. He thinks with bitter irony that he had been too bang-on for his own good.)

They were childhood friends, having grown apart in their late teens but still relatively close. Masaomi thinks he had loved her once, but it was the sort of love that faded with the seasons, fluttering away like the last leaf of autumn. Shiori was the perfect high-class wife, her hand sought by many; she was clever and beautiful and demure, but she had eyes only for him, he who could never love her the way she did him. 

They have sex a month into Nami’s pregnancy. Masaomi did not care much for either woman then, preferring to stare at the picture of the smiling dark-haired lady on his bedside table and weep like there was no tomorrow. But Shiori cared, more than anything, because it was her Masa-kun with her and nothing else mattered, not even the fact that he screamed someone else's name when he dug into her. 

Masaomi is not a stupid man. He knows that her kisses burn because underneath her sweetness lies poison, and that her touches leave him wanting because he craves two women who are nothing like her. But he goes back anyway, because Shiori… Shiori will stay. She has _always_ stayed. She will not leave him the way Sora and Nami had left him. The sea and sky disappear, but the sun hangs there forever, flaming and flaming until it has burned itself out and then some. 

The pregnancy is not a surprise, this time, mostly because Shiori had already carried her child for eight months when she came to him with the news. Masaomi's parents shake their heads and sigh; they have never been able to love Shiori the way that they had loved Sora and Nami. But he knows she loves him, and isn't that enough? 

When the child is born, she holds him in her arms with a flinch of revulsion before passing him to Masaomi. He looks down at the boy, _his_ boy, and he thinks: _you do not have her jet-black hair, or her blue-gray eyes. You are not hers the way I was hers._ He looks at the boy's mother, abject displeasure on her face as she stares at the child, and he thinks: _I never melted you the way I melted her, never floated in you the way I did in her. You are not mine the way she was mine._

She remains after the boy—Seijuurou—is born. She stays by Masaomi's side for ten beautiful and terrible years, her grip tight around his hand like a brand being etched into his skin over and over. Seijuurou grows up with red hair and crimson eyes and a mother who whispers the venom of love in his ears. 

Masaomi does not look at the boy. He is a painful copy of her, in both looks and mannerism. His kindness, though, is genuine: it comes from deep within, and when he bends over to help a snail back into its shell or sneaks a maid his pocket money when he thinks his parents aren't looking, it flashes fleetingly to Masaomi that _maybe, just maybe, he is my son too._

Shiori does not leave. She stays with her hand around Masaomi's and her fingernails deep into his heart, clawing so hard like she's afraid to let go. She stays when he calls her by a name not hers, and when he asks her later why, her only response is, “Because I love you, Masa-kun.” She stays through hell and heaven and earth, by Masaomi's side even as she grows frailer and frailer, and he falls in love the way you fall in love with the sweet pain that comes from pulling sharp blades across soft skin.

She stays, until she doesn't. 

It is a warm day when she is lowered into the ground. The sun burns bright, almost oppressively; Masaomi sees what is exposed of his son's skin starting to turn pink, and knows from the stinging on his cheeks and wrists that his own is reddening too. He turns his head away and looks at the pale face of Shiori, her red hair surrounding her cheeks like a halo of fire—like spilled blood.

That's when it hits Masaomi. It's a ludicrous theory, but it's the only one that fits. Shiori had always loved him to madness, even when they were children: it's not a stretch to consider that that madness had extended into adulthood. 

From that day onwards, Masaomi buries himself in searching for his sea and sky, in shutting out the sun that had scorched his world for so long. In the process he goes blind to the fact that that sun bore a child… and that the child took after his mother in far more than just looks or temperament. Akashi Seijuurou becomes heir to his father’s fortune and his mother’s features. He inherits Shiori’s crimson hair and her guileless eyes, her calm perfectionism, and the kerosene of madness that lay within her, just waiting to be lit. 

And so it is that Masaomi's third heartbreak is fire, turning the ground beneath his feet to ashes even as he hides away and convinces himself it doesn't exist.

* * *

Masaomi does not find them no matter how hard he searches. He tears apart the world from top to bottom in desperation, yet all his leads turn to dust at the end. He does not think to dip his nose in the sport that Shiori and Seijuurou so loved, does not think to look in the high-school circuit for the two lost children who might clue him into their mothers’ whereabouts. 

He gives up four years into his quest, four years too late to see that the only son he has left is not even his own anymore. He notices not when the child he does have sits at the end of the too-long dinner table, as far from him as one can get; when Seijuurou speaks, his ears fill with the laughter of the children that might have been. He does not see that his son comes home with a trophy and without a smile every year, does not hear how flat the boy’s voice has become, and he does not notice when the child’s eyes change. Seijuurou is too much like Shiori for Masaomi to look at him without wanting to scream. 

It’s just as well, for he never notices the same madness dancing in the gold-and-red eyes as had incinerated his sky and sea.


	2. Shiori I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MOST of the trigger warnings (except child abuse) are for this chapter and the next one. Please please read the tags and be veryyyyy careful!  
> This is just Shiori's first part. Her story got so long and I had so much fun writing her PoV, I needed nearly 6k for it!  
> Thanks so much for your sweet comments <3

_Your light illuminated my dark world and taught me things better left to night’s veils._

* * *

There are demons under Shiori’s bed. 

They call to her, spidery hands clutching the wooden frame of her pallet as they try to clamber up to where she is, and their rasping voices promise pain. Shiori huddles in the middle of the mattress, clutching her blankets to her chin, and does not sleep. Her eyes are bloodshot and her skin is paler every day. 

Her parents worry. They whisper about ‘fractures in her mind’ and ‘ill health’, but they don’t have to, because Shiori isn’t sick. She’s smart—all her tutors say so—and she knows that when you’re not well, you never want to get up from bed.

Shiori would be happy if she never had to see a bed again. 

Her mother comes to her room one night to find her curled up in the middle of the bed, an unblinking stare fixed on the closed door. When she asks why, clearly trying to hide the note of fear in her voice, Shiori says matter-of-factly, “There are demons under my bed.”

Her mother looks disbelievingly at her for nearly a minute before scoffing. 

“Shi, _no._ Go to sleep.” 

“I can’t. If I go to sleep, the demons will eat me.” Shiori says sagely. 

“That’s ridiculous, Shiori! You’re twelve. You can’t have these childish fears any more.” replies her mother, annoyance creasing her pretty brows. 

“But there _are_ demons!” Shiori says angrily. “They want to pick me up and eat me! Look!” 

She points at the edge of the bed, where a thin hand is even now trying to creep towards her, just waiting for her to let her guard down. Her mother sighs through her nose; when she does that, it always means that Shiori has won. 

Winning is good. Winning is what makes you worthy for the prize that comes after it. In Shiori’s case, it means—

“Fine,” her mother says defeatedly. “I’ll ask a servant to bring up a night-lamp for you. You can’t keep the light on all night; people will start asking what’s wrong with you.”

“Light…” Shiori asks haltingly. “Light will make the demons go away?” Her mother pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“ _Yes._ Now go to sleep.” she says harshly, bustling out of the room and muttering something under her breath. Once she’s gone, Shiori reaches over to the side of her bed, tugging on the cord that switches on the light in her room; then she peers under the bed… 

There’s nothing there. The demons have disappeared without a trace.

“Light will make the demons go away,” she repeats wonderingly. “Light will make them go away!”

The servant brings the night-lamp to her room with a patient smile, and Shiori watches with awe as its shade twists and turns in the soft breeze from her ceiling fan, scattering beautiful designs across her ceiling. She looks under her bed again after turning off the main light, and is pleased to find that there are no demons.

“Light will make them go away,” she whispers to herself, finally gathering the courage to lie down and cover herself in blankets. Her eyes trace the patterns that dance across everything in the room, illuminating her world, and it isn’t long before they soothe her tired little body to sleep. 

She does not wake before nine the next morning, and is thoroughly scolded for it. But her young mind, fresh from the first good rest she has had in a long while, can barely care about her mother’s anger in front of the new discovery she’s made. 

_Darkness is bad. It has demons. Light is good. It protects me._

_Light will always protect me, won’t it?_

* * *

She meets Masaomi when they are thirteen and both packed off to a boarding school. He’s crying for his mother, looking like a complete baby. She doesn’t know what possesses her to do it, but she pulls out her handkerchief and offers it to him without a word. The tears recede in an instant as he stares at her with shocked eyes. 

“Are you going to take it?” she asks tonelessly. 

“I—” he says, his voice choked from crying. “I—”

She’s just about to put it back in her pocket when his hand shoots out to grab it. Shiori’s eyebrows raise a fraction of an inch as he starts scrubbing his face in a most undignified manner; once he’s done and the redness fades, he looks at her and smiles.

It’s as bright as the lights she’s come to love. Shiori’s left frozen to the spot many moments after, staring at the empty place where the boy with the sunshine grin had been.

It’s only a few days later that she learns his name. _Akashi Masaomi._ She’s mildly surprised—as the heir to one of Japan’s oldest conglomerates, she would have thought he was taught to be more dignified—but she soon finds she doesn’t care when he slips in next to her on the first day of classes and gives her the sunshine smile once more. 

Masaomi is one of those people who you just _know_ is going to be stunning when he grows up. He’s got the beginnings of a sharp jawline, messy brown hair that’s just starting to straighten out, and a smile that’s even brighter than Shiori’s night-lamp. He’s everything a girl could want. Wealthy and powerful, yet attentive and sweet. Cheerful always, a beacon of warmth to the frostbite enveloping Shiori’s fragile body.

The best part is, he doesn’t try for any of those things—it’s just who he _is,_ kindness overflowing out of his every orifice without a thought. Even to someone like her, competitive and harsh and as unforgiving as her icy demeanour indicates. His unending gentleness manages to crush her stone mask in one blow, and he keeps at it until they are friends for real—the first person she can honestly call as such. She’s known as the ‘Snow Queen’ to the general student body, but Masaomi tells her that he thinks it’s a ridiculous nickname.

“You’re like the sun,” he says. “You burn, Arai-san. You’re dazzling.”

 _I burn._ Shiori thinks to herself, tucking the words safely away within. She can feel their soft light pushing through the pumping walls of her heart and the layers of skin that cover her chest. _I burn._

“You burn,” Masaomi says again, as if confirming it to himself. Shiori looks at him, the wind tousling his hair as he smiles serenely up into the spring sky, and feels suddenly dizzy. 

_You’re the one that’s dazzling, Akashi-kun._

* * *

“You can call me Masaomi, you know.” he tells her one day, his cheeks flushed lightly—with the summer heat or with something else, she doesn’t know.

“That’s not proper at all,” Shiori says, trying to hide the tremulous excitement in her voice. Masaomi shrugs, his lips pulling apart to flash shining teeth.

“Who gives a fig for propriety, Arai-san?” he says carelessly. “Even a nickname would be nice. We’re friends, aren’t we?” 

She’d considered them such for a long time now, but to hear the admission tumble so thoughtlessly from his lips sends her heart jumping in a strange manner. 

“A nickname…” she says slowly. “Okay, Masa-kun.”

“Masa-kun, huh? That’s kinda cute.” Shiori’s cheeks turn slightly red, and Masaomi laughs. 

“Then Masa-kun must call me Shiori, too. It’s only fair,” she shoots back quickly: Arai Shiori has never been one to lose. Masaomi tilts his head with a playful smile at her words. 

I suppose it is,” he says softly, “Shiori.” 

The way he pronounces her name—saying each syllable like it’s something precious—makes her lower lip wobble. Shiori settles for directing a small but warm smile at him, hoping that it carries even a drop of the same light that is usually in his own. 

* * *

In the blink of an eye, Masa-kun becomes a permanent fixture in her life. They’re never apart, even during the summer holidays (ah, the wonders of the telephone!); Masa-kun confesses shyly that she’s his only real friend, and Shiori takes inordinate delight in the knowledge. He’s like her night-lamp, its sweet glow obliterating all the demons that hide under her bed. If her lamp had lit her room when night fell, Masa-kun lit her world and showed her everything that had been hidden under the cover of darkness. 

Shiori swears she’ll never allow anything to be touched by darkness again. 

When they are fifteen, Masa-kun says, “Promise you’ll stay? Even if I lose my way, you’ll find me?” She wraps her hand around his and smiles, the one she reserves just for him.

“Don’t be silly. I’ll never let Masa-kun lose his way.”

They are childish words, spoken with the simmering passion of young love. Yet Shiori, fresh and newly-opened like a lotus bud, truly believes them with every inch of her soul, even when they start to grow apart slowly as they age. She does not notice how Masa-kun no longer looks at her the way he used to, no longer smiles at her with that same sunshine in his face, and remains innocent in her belief up to the day that Masa-kun informs her he’s leaving the country for college. 

“I’ll come back soon.” he says in a strained voice as Shiori clasps his hands with a plea for him not to leave. “Don’t worry, Arai-san.”

That last word is what slackens her grip. _Arai-san…_ he hasn’t called her that since they were fourteen. 

Masa-kun smiles at her, and _oh,_ how had she never realised how empty he’d become? It’s her fault, she thinks desperately as he turns and walks away to his car. It’s all her fault. She promised that she would find him if he ever lost his way, but she’s the one who’s just letting him run astray now. She allowed him to go off the right path.

_He said he’ll come back to Japan. He said I shouldn’t worry. He’s still Masa-kun and Masa-kun never lies._

_I’ll fix him when he comes back._

* * *

When Masa-kun arrives to see her next, it is a year after he finishes college and with a beautiful woman on his arm. Their fathers have some business, and as soon as Shiori learned of it she asked if Masa-kun could come under the pretense of missing a good friend. 

(It doesn’t matter that he clearly hadn’t thought of her for that whole year. She can set him to rights now, can’t she?) 

Now she sits in the parlour, smoothing her simple but flattering white dress nervously and patting her hair to make sure it’s perfect. “Is he here yet?” she must have asked a dozen times, yet she can’t help but beg it of the maids again. They don’t deign to answer—their blood brims with contempt for her strange ways, and since they don’t get flack for their behaviour from either of her parents, they haven’t a shred of respect for her. 

The doorbell rings, and Shiori barely thinks before she’s running to be the first to it. She tosses the door open and _there he is_ and oh, God, _nothing is right at all._

She had agonised over what to wear for a whole week before his visit, nearly rending her wardrobe to pieces. Yet here Masa-kun stands, devastatingly handsome but clearly not having put a scrap of effort into his appearance, as evidenced by his uncombed hair, printed t-shirt and _board shorts_ of all the things. But that isn’t even the worst part, because behind him stands a tall, breathtakingly beautiful woman in a pretty blue sundress, her hand wrapped around Masa-kun’s upper arm in a fashion which almost indicates that they’re— _t_ _ogether._

Shiori gapes up at them wordlessly. Masa-kun grew in the time he was gone and she’s always been short, so it’s now a nine-inch difference between them; the woman behind him, however, is almost as tall as him with just about half a centimetre less. 

_Perfect for kissing._

“Ah,” Masa-kun says, his voice stilted and deep like she doesn’t remember it being. “This is Sora. My...”

“Your fiancée,” Sora supplies, smiling easily, and something inside Shiori shatters.

 _Your fiancée. Fiancée, fiancée, fiancée._ The word spins around her head like it’s a merry-go-round.

_Masa-kun… do I even know you anymore?!_

It is all she can do to force a demure smile and congratulate the couple. It tastes like acid to say, “That’s wonderful, Masa-kun. I’m really glad for you and Sora-san,” but Shiori does it anyway because she’s used to spitting out poison.

“Come inside!” she says as cheerfully as she can manage. “It’s been _ages,_ Masa-kun, let’s talk! And I’d love to get to know Sora-san!” 

Oh, if only ‘murder’ could replace ‘get to know’. 

Shiori’s shocked at herself for a split second—but does it matter? Does it matter as long as she can pry this _leech_ away from her Masa-kun? She knew him first; she loved him first! So cool logic tempers hot morality, and the pieces of Shiori’s broken heart start to reach towards each other again with tendrils of hope. 

_I have to get her out of the way._

It’ll be easy enough, Shiori muses as she leads them to the parlour. A hitman at the right spot while Sora’s shopping, a ‘car accident’ when she’s on her morning jog… so many things she can do, so many ways to obliterate this enemy of hers and Masa-kun’s.

They sit down and start talking, Shiori’s mind wandering to various ideas of murder even as she makes polite conversation—maybe her head is just working overtime because all that comes out of Masa-kun’s mouth is _Sora, Sora, Sora._ Still, she collects the vague details of the story; apparently Sora’s family is prominent, though she doesn’t recognise the name (did Masa-kun even mention it?); they had met nearly five years ago when Masa-kun was home on summer leave and Sora was closing a deal with Akashi-san (why hadn’t Masa-kun visited _her?_ ); Sora had _hated_ him at first but slowly fell for him (she doesn’t deserve him if she couldn’t see how wonderful he is as soon as she saw him). 

Sora’s curtain of hair is like liquid darkness, she notices suddenly as the leech flicks a strand of it behind her back. Shiori sees the hair contort itself into wizened hands, sees those hands reach predatorily towards her—the hands of the demons she hasn’t faced since she was twelve—and clenches the arms of her chair just a little tighter. 

The happy couple doesn’t notice, too busy gazing lovingly at each other. Shiori doesn’t know whether to be relieved or hateful for it. 

(She chooses both, in the end.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn shiori i get it ur in love but like please take a chill pill baby


	3. Shiori II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys sm for the lovely comments!! i'm so so glad you're enjoying this little story.  
> most of the trigger warnings, again, apply to this chapter. PLEASE READ THE TAGS!!

A few more minutes pass, meaningless small talk passing between the three. But Shiori can’t stop thinking about those _hands,_ beckoning her close only to rip her to shreds.

“Arai-san?” asks a light female voice. Sora’s brows are creased—with worry or something else, Shiori can’t tell. “Are you alright? You seem a little pale.”

“Just fine. I haven’t been sleeping very well,” Shiori says easily, the lie slipping off her tongue like water. She’s been sleeping better than usual knowing that Masa-kun would come to visit her, but she doesn’t see a good rest in store for her tonight. No, she will be too busy planning the covert murder of one Sora… 

“What was your family name again?” she asks, her turn to wear a slight frown. Sora smiles a little nervously. 

“I… well…”

“She’s an orphan,” Masa-kun says quickly. “Never had a family.” Sora squeezes his hand, her mouth twitching up into a real smile now.

“Yeah,” she says, backing up the answer. Shiori’s frown deepens for a split second ( _Masa-kun never lies to me what’s going on_ ), but she shakes her head—now isn’t the time.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says softly, projecting as much condolence into her voice as she can. “It’s wonderful that you could find love with Masa-kun, though. He truly is an amazing person.”

“He is, isn’t he?” Sora agrees, poking Masa-kun’s reddening cheek. It takes every inch of will in Shiori’s small body not to march over and break her wrist. “I didn’t see it for a long time, but I don’t regret that. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten to know him the way I do now.”

 _Shut up, you dark demon. Just shut up,_ is what Shiori wants to say.

“That’s so nice! You two make such a sweet couple,” is what she says instead.

The rest of the afternoon progresses like that, awkward small talk passing between the three of them. It feels like swallowing nails, but Shiori thinks she pulls it off rather remarkably—at least, until Sora asks her to lead her to the bathroom and instead corners her outside it. 

“Look,” hisses the dark-haired woman, looking down at Shiori with her superior eight inches. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, you little wench _._ But don’t think I don’t see the way you look at Masaomi—and at me.”

“I—” Shiori stammers, truly flabbergasted. Sora snorts, her dark eyes ( _d_ _emon’s eyes_ ) glinting with fury.

“You look at me like you’re thinking of a hundred ways to kill me. What, were you considering hitmen? An ‘accident’, perhaps?”

Shiori’s face pales. It’s all the answer that Sora needs.

“Don’t worry.” Sora says and lifts Shiori’s hand, placing it on her own hip. Shiori gasps softly as she feels the outline of hard metal under the light blue chiffon—a _handgun._ “I know very well how to use that, in case you were wondering. I’ll be safe, Shiori-chan.”

She smiles, as sharp and black as the rest of her. Shiori’s torn between wanting to kill her and wanting to curl up and die instead of facing that terrifying gaze. She chooses the latter, staying frozen to the spot as Sora whirls and walks back down the hallway to Masa-kun. 

That sheet of straight, glossy black hair floats in Shiori’s vision like a dark veil obscuring her world long after Sora is gone. 

When she finally musters the courage to return to the hall, no one comments on her absence. Akashi-san is downstairs now, and he smiles warmly at her, a few pleasantries passing between them. Masa-kun and Sora are already getting ready to leave, quietly talking to each other and casting the occasional glance at her. Shiori pretends not to notice, fiddling with her dress and hair and waiting for them to look away. After a few agonising moments, Sora stands up and says politely, “Thank you for being an exemplary host, Arai-san. It was lovely meeting you.”

“You as well,” Shiori says, the words like ash on her tongue. 

Sora casts her one last searching glance, then takes the first step forward, striding quickly towards the door. Akashi-san goes with her, both of them chatting to each other as comfortably as if they were father and daughter. Masa-kun follows like a henpecked husband, his eyes only on that alluring ( _demonic_ ) curtain of hair—then he stops abruptly just as Sora’s out the door, turning halfway to Shiori with his lips parting. Her heart thrills in her chest; for a minute, she dares to hope. 

_Maybe he’s finally seen the truth… maybe meeting me again helped—_

Then Masa-kun opens his mouth, and it all turns to dust. 

“Perhaps,” he says haltingly, “it’s for the best that you don’t call me that nickname anymore. We outgrew that a long time ago, don’t you think?” 

Shiori draws in a sharp breath. It feels like her airway is laden with broken glass.

“I—” she manages. “Yes, you’re right. Goodbye, M—Akashi-kun.” 

_How long it’s been since I thought of you like that!_

“Goodbye, Arai-san,” Masa-kun says solemnly, and then he is gone, just like the ground under Shiori’s feet. She stares after the door as it swings shut, closing on all her dreams and hopes—

_No!_

She is Arai Shiori, and _Arai Shiori does not lose._ Not to anyone… 

Not even the darkest, most powerful demon.

* * *

Finding out exactly who Sora was turned out to be easy enough when she saw a tall man who looked and sounded just like an older version of her discussing some rather cutthroat deals with her father. But that knowledge is frightening enough that it puts Shiori off trying anything—for now, at any rate. 

_A yakuza princess. I never would have thought Masa-kun the type… but good things come to those who wait, no? So I just need to wait for my turn._

She has to save Masa-kun from that demon. She’s the only one who loves him enough to be able to. Shiori lies in wait and watches the relationship progress, watches Sora kneel with a ring (it’s uncouth to take a man’s role, but can she expect any less from a _yakuza_?), watches Masa-kun nearly cry when he accepts it. 

Her patience more than pays off eventually, though, when Sora cuts all ties with her powerful family to be with Masa-kun and her belly swells. No more backup, no more fear for her enemies and a new liability to exploit. Shiori can’t stop the insane laughter that bubbles out of her throat when she overhears the news, shaking with mad joy. 

Sora might have been an expert at digging graves, but she never realised that that included her own. 

* * *

Within the month of their engagement, Sora is gone—and Shiori, after fourteen days, is ready at long last.

She touches up her lipstick in a hand-mirror and waits for Masa-kun to enter the bar. He’s been visiting it steadily for three weeks now; Masa-kun was with a woman one night, but her hair was bright and her clothes ragged, enough that Shiori dismissed her as fully human, unlike the witch that she had rid him of just recently. 

“Shiori?” asks a rough, pained voice. Shiori starts, peeling her gaze away from the door, to find a haggard young man looking down at her. She frowns for a second, confused—

_No way!_

“M—Akashi-kun!” she exclaims softly. Masa-kun looks nothing like himself, his hair all over the place, unshaven stubble decorating his chin and bags under his eyes. “Are you alright? You don’t look—”

She’s cut off when he places his hands on her waist, lowering his neck and pressing his forehead against hers. His breath is warm and sour with alcohol when he whispers, “You look beautiful. Don’t stand on formality with me, we’re old friends, aren’t we?”

“ _Akashi-kun,"_ she breathes back, her mind screaming with joy even for this drink-induced attention from him. “But you asked me—”

“Shh,” he says, placing a finger on her lips and smiling. At that moment, Shiori doesn’t even care that it doesn’t reach his eyes. “ _Shiori._ I loved when you used to call me… what was it again?”

Shiori smiles back. She’s hurt by his words, but just a bit—not enough to dampen her mood now that her plans are finally underway.

“Masa-kun?” she says softly, putting it like a question. Masa-kun nods, swaying slightly. 

“Yeah.” he says. “Yeah, that. Will you…” 

“Will I?” Shiori asks, her heart nearly beating out of her chest.

“Will you…” he whispers, not completing the sentence before he captures her mouth in a kiss. Shiori gasps a little, not thinking he’d move this fast, but responds anyway, delighted at finally having her Masa-kun (even if this first taste is just for a night). 

“Shall we?” she asks a bit shyly, darting her eyes at the love hotel across the street. Masa-kun smiles rakishly, the same ( ~~false~~ ) grin he would wear at school. 

“My lady,” he breathes, offering his arm. Shiori takes it with euphoria, not caring for a minute that they look ridiculous as they prance across the road together. She couldn’t have felt more like a princess if she had been in the middle of a ballroom. 

Once they’ve ordered a room, they stumble into bed like children learning to walk. Fleetingly, as Masa-kun fumbles with his jeans, Shiori thinks to herself, _Is this taking advantage of him?_

But no. It can’t be. She’d never do that to her Masa-kun… this is all for his own good. Besides, it isn’t taking advantage when they are both drunk—him on alcohol, and her (as cheesy as it may sound) on love. 

Right? 

Shiori feels the pit of wrongness start to disappear as Masa-kun’s mouth travels all over her. It simply dissolves when he pushes into her, pain and pleasure intermixing, and she can’t even bring herself to care when he screams, “ _So_ _ra!”_ and buries his face in the pillow instead of looking at her afterwards. 

In the morning, she looks at his innocent sleeping mien, the beautiful face that will soon be wholly hers—then she walks to the door as softly as she can manage, shutting it with a quiet click and disappearing.

* * *

Three months after that fateful night, Shiori cups the small bump on her lower belly and smiles.

Three minutes after, the TV bubbles over with news that makes her face turn white. She screams and crumples to the floor. 

_“Akashi Masaomi announces that he has been secretly engaged for four months!”_

* * *

The woman’s name is Nami. She’s the same one who was with her Masa-kun, the one Shiori deemed harmless at first. Her stomach is visibly round, and even her worst enemies cannot deny that she glows as beautifully as the night-lamp that Shiori still keeps by her bedside. The dye from her hair, long-faded, reveals black roots, and Shiori’s lungs ice over when she realises she should have known better. Much, much better. 

The disguise of colours will always part way for inky night—and no black-haired woman is anything but a demon. 

The next five months pass like a blur. Shiori continues to watch the pair, noticing that Masa-kun seems happier every day. She does her digging, too; Nami comes from poverty, and has everything to lose, unlike her predecessor.

_Just like I chased away that sky-witch, I’ll banish this sea-witch to the depths of the murky ocean. I’ll deliver judgment for your sake, my Masa-kun… and then you’ll see, won’t you?_

The same trick she had used with Sora, she uses on Nami, employing the very shadows she had once feared so. Shiori still hates them with every fibre of her being, but sometimes the best way to defeat your enemies is to become their allies.

She will weaken the darkness slowly, and then she will strangle it with her Masa-kun’s blinding light. 

* * *

Shiori plays all her cards right, and Nami is gone within days of her childbirth. A week later is when she steps in, her own stomach grown more than prominent in the eight months since she had conceived. She’d been disowned from her house a long while ago when she’d first started showing, but now is the time to use this last ace that’s up her sleeve. 

“The baby, Akashi-san… it’s your son’s,” she tells his parents with tears in her eyes. “We hadn’t meant for it to happen, but we were both not ourselves that night. It was a careless mistake, one I wouldn’t have wanted with someone as dear a friend to me as he is. I wish it wasn’t his, but it’s not possible that it’s anyone else’s—I’ve never—” and she bursts into incoherent sobs, hiccupping her way through fake apologies.

Not every bit of that is false. The best lies always contain a hint of truth, after all.

Their engagement happens within the hour and their marriage in the next week (however bad it looks to have a child out of wedlock, it’ll be worse to birth it before union). Shiori is radiant as she walks up the aisle with an enormous belly, her dress stretching at the seams. Yet her Masa-kun remains distant throughout the wedding, barely grazing her lips with his for longer than he needs to and distractedly staring at the head of every black-haired woman attending (including Shiori’s own aunt).

But it doesn’t matter anymore, Shiori thinks frenziedly. It doesn’t matter because she is now _Akashi Shiori,_ because Masa-kun is finally, legally _hers;_ there is a ring on his finger binding him to her, like a golden cuff, and she doesn’t care that it isn’t a cuff he wears of his own will.

He’ll come around soon. All chained dogs do.

* * *

Shiori stares at the wailing bundle in her arms and feels nothing. 

She had never wanted to be a mother. All she had wanted was her Masa-kun, and he was here. She’d considered aborting, even brought it up to Masa-kun, but he had shot her a horrified look and denied it hotly. 

“Here,” she says, forcing a smile towards Masa-kun. He smiles back with a trace of the sunshine she’d fallen in love with and takes the baby, a carbon copy of her.

Shiori finally feels something towards the newborn when she sees the excitement in Masa-kun’s eyes—something raw, something primal.

_I hate you._

_I'll never let you take my Masa-kun from me._

It just goes to show some demons can dress in light—but Shiori’s been given the ability to see the darkness brimming within those red eyes, so like her own, and she knows she needs to null the child’s ability. She cannot get away with outright destroying her own progeny, but the child is a monster, and she must show his true nature to his father.

(It’s just as well that she never notices those eyes becoming more and more like what she sees in the mirror every morning, and how Masa-kun’s face falls as soon as he looks at the little boy.)

* * *

Illness seizes her months after the pregnancy, but Shiori clings to life with the desperation of a hero who can no longer fight. She cannot die, and she cannot leave. She can’t disappear from Masa-kun’s life like she’d made the demons disappear; this is her place to hold forever.

_If I am gone, who will protect Masa-kun from that demon?!_

For the next thirteen years, Shiori clutches life to her chest the way she had held her blankets as a twelve-year-old even as she becomes confined to bed. Even as the fiends start to return and there is no light to chase them off. Even as she spends her days whispering into the child’s ears and her nights crying silently as she wishes the devils away. Even as she starts to forget her husband’s features, everything she’d known slipping into the cracks that weather her mind.

Her chest catches one day, too fast for her to calm herself down, and Shiori knows that this is the awful end. There is no escape now, not even for her crafty mind.

 _Masa-kun_ — she thinks, tears sliding down her face, but can’t finish the thought before the last breath puffs out of her lips and life leaves her thin body.


	4. Seijuurou

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo boi! This was a fun chapter to write - it's Akashi's, and I characterise him very differently from the canon. So if you think OG!Akashi was a paragon of perfection... this is not for you.  
> If you guys notice, the tone drastically shifted from Masaomi's chapter to Shiori's. Shiori's chapters are how the story is going to be - Masaomi's chapter was essentially a set-up chapter.  
> This chapter contains child abuse, most emotional and some physical. Be careful, and please read the tags once more. There shouldn't be much triggering content after this one and the next.

_ One hit and my practiced perfection shattered like glass, built on the base of lies that you told me were truth.  _

* * *

“Only if you’re the best…” his mother breathes, her skeletal hands tracing around Seijuurou’s small jaw. He doesn’t have the gall to tell her that her skin feels as cold as death and her knobby fingers like knives slicing his face. “Papa will love you only if you’re the best. You’ll do that for him, won’t you?”

Seijuurou is a smart boy, like his mother before him, and he understands that she means far more than what she’s saying. 

_ Papa will love me only if I am the best. But Mama loves me regardless, don’t you, Mama? That’s why you’re teaching me how to earn my place in the world.  _

“I’ll be the best, Mama,” he says quietly, and means it; not for he who had cast neither of them a second glance after his birth, but for she who gave him everything and told him it was nothing. 

* * *

Seijuurou’s father is like the cold firmament, and his mother is an astronomer who eagerly tries to unveil his secrets. Shiori can only view her distant husband through her telescope, but even in his iciness, her eyes are always shining with the reflection of the sky. 

“Don’t be an astronomer, Mama,” Seijuurou says during one of their daily talks, where he sits at her bedside and listens to her tell him all about the world. Shiori tilts her head, her brows furrowing slightly.

“What do you mean?” 

“Astronomers shouldn’t keep watching the sky if it won’t give them anything.” Seijuurou says, looking down at their joined hands. The light of understanding enters Shiori’s eyes, and she smiles wryly.

“Oh, Seijuurou! No, no. What would I look up there for, when I have all I need right  _ here? _ ”

Seijuurou feels a mixture of pleasure at her answer and embarrassment at being wrong, but revels in her attention anyway, shaking off the feeling that she’s looking straight through him. 

Over the next few weeks, everything becomes obvious—how Shiori smiles when she clearly wants to cry, how she stays by his father’s side despite the complete lack of love from his end, and how Masaomi’s eyes are always distant as if revolving around some other star. It’s the exact opposite of what he’d thought at first. His father is the explorer, searching the sky and sea for something he can never find, and his mother the sun burning faithfully above the horizon, hoping desperately that he will realise it is she who illuminates his world. 

* * *

The candle is a permanent fixture when it comes to his mother. She carries it everywhere, whether it be in the holder on her wheelchair (so close it could almost singe her hair) or on her bedside table.

“It gives me strength,” she explains when Seijuurou asks why she doesn’t put it out at night. “Its light is purifying.”

“What does it purify?” he asks. 

“Everything,” Shiori says with a smile that Seijuurou both loves and fears. “Everything… do you want to see how it works?”

Seijuurou nods, half-afraid. Shiori draws him close, almost into her lap, and draws back her large sleeve to reveal a series of red marks on her pale forearm. They seem almost sunken into her skin, some puffed and some shrunken. It’s a terrible sight—

It’s a  _ beautiful  _ sight, Seijuurou corrects himself, logic pushing through his horror. Mama says that it purifies, and purity is always lovely, isn’t it. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says out loud and forces back the bile in his throat.

“Do you want to try it?” Shiori says very quietly. Seijuurou swallows; there is something in her eyes, a manic light of sorts, that  _ terrifies  _ him—but this is Mama. Mama  _ loves  _ him. She will never hurt him.

“Will it help?” he says in a small voice, hating how weak he sounds. Shiori smiles weakly and nods.

“Yes.” she says softly, the glint in her eyes intensifying. “Very much. Take off your shirt, Sei.”

Seijuurou obeys, and bites his lip when he feels the sting against his back. It’s light, fleeting, but the pain remains for a good minute after he blinks the tears out of his eyes.

“Did it feel good?” Shiori asks, her gaze searching. Seijuurou inhales sharply— _ what answer do you want?  _

Shiori’s chin trembles, dipping a fraction. He doesn’t know if it’s voluntary or not, but it’s enough.

“Yes,” Seijuurou says confidently, his mind made up in an instant. Purification is supposed to feel good; Mama wants it to feel good.

He’ll make this lie become true and make himself feel good—for her. 

“Yes.” 

“All right.” Shiori says, patting the bed gently. “It’s time for Mama to sleep now.”

Seijuurou recognises the dismissal. He kisses her forehead and leaves the room, never noticing how her gaze sharpens on his back.

* * *

He slips the maids his pocket money when his parents aren’t looking. He stops to prevent a baby snail from being swallowed by a hungry eagle. He doesn’t do this by his own volition; he’s read about kindness, and about how kind people always finish first, and if he can be kind then he can be the best. 

He doesn’t notice when it starts to become part of him.

He doesn't allow himself to notice when it stops being. 

* * *

They bury Shiori on Seijuurou’s ninth birthday.

Her body is pale and still in the coffin, possessed by none of the fire she’d had in life. Now that she’s dead, Seijuurou sees the delicacy that others had seen in her; he sees how  _ small  _ she really is without the brightly burning personality to obscure her size.

The veil of innocence that Shiori had draped her son in is muddied by the dirt they heap on her closed coffin. Seijuurou watches with a blank face as everything he had ever loved is torn away from him by death’s cruel hands.

* * *

Days blur into weeks and weeks into months. Seijuurou has stopped counting the days since his mother died; all he knows is that despite his best efforts to be perfect, his father looks at him even less, if that is possible. He swears he even caught Masaomi flinching when his sleeve rode up too far to show one of his marks of purity.

_ Why, Father? Why are you afraid of this? Is it because you are yourself impure?  _

_ Or is my purity stopping me from being the best?  _

As time passes, Seijuurou watches because that’s what he’s always been best at doing. He sees his father crying over two picture frames one night: the next morning, he sneaks into Masaomi’s study and takes out the pictures. 

One is of a tall, dark-haired, and smiling woman with a cloudless sky behind her; the other is of a much shorter but still dark-haired and smiling lady standing on the seashore. Both of them look exceedingly different: where the first has an almost regal face and bearing with a powerful build, the second is pixie-like in every sense of the word and clearly pregnant. They are worlds apart—and yet there is something about both, some magic that Seijuurou can admit Shiori did not have despite all the love he holds for his mother. 

That is when he understands. No matter how hard his mother tried, she would never be the best to his father—that’s why she wanted  _ him  _ at least to have Masaomi’s love. That’s why she wanted him to be the best of all, to stand above everyone else and win his father’s approval.

She would never be the best, Seijuurou realises, because she was just too pure for it.

He does not cleanse himself after that night.

* * *

His classmates on the basketball team are… different. They are all so impure, so crass—even Midorima, despite the air of refinement he carries about himself, is given to occasional shenanigans with them. However, Seijuurou finds himself drawn more and more to them, to their quirks and the way they all fit together like an imperfect but beautiful puzzle. Sometimes, he lingers and watches them as they walk home from practice in a big group, their thoughts barely going to him. 

It crosses his mind once that maybe he would like to fit in too. He dismisses the thought immediately, but the pit of want that comes with it does not go away so fast. 

Kuroko is even stranger than the others, and yet not. The connection Seijuurou feels to him is not easily defined. It makes him want to twist Kuroko, to bend him and break him because _ no one can be like him.  _ If he wants to be the best, he has to be one of a kind. It’s gentleness, really. No two can stand at the top—it’s only right that he crush Kuroko’s hopes then and there.

_ This is the best thing to do. _

So Seijuurou drops Kuroko a thread. It’s a backhanded offer: if Kuroko grabs onto it, he will become even more invisible than he usually is. If he doesn’t, he will be forced out of what he loves. It’s a fight between individuality and love for the sport; and if Seijuurou is right about the kind of person Kuroko is, then it isn’t even really a choice, is it?

* * *

He was right. Kuroko takes the thread, like Seijuurou was sure he’d do—but when he accepts the offer, there’s a strangely knowing look in his eyes that Seijuurou does not like in the least bit. It seems to say,  _ I’m well aware of what this means, and I’m taking it on anyway.  _

It confuses Seijuurou, and that is mildly worrying because not many things do. If Kuroko was able to see through his maneuver, then surely he must be smart enough to find a way past it?

The question persists for a week, until one day at practice Seijuurou spots out of the corner of his eye Aomine and Kuroko speaking among themselves. He sees the way that Aomine and Kuroko look at each other, and he understands. 

_ You are more foolish than I thought you were.  _

Adoration is a prize to be won. Success will give you what you want permanently, so why chase a love that will disappear if you fail your chosen pursuit?

_ What person in their right mind would give up victory for the sake of love? _

* * *

Basketball is the one thing his mother asked him to try for her. 

She doesn’t know, of course, that everything Seijuurou does is dedicated to her. But this is the only selfish request she has ever taken from him, and to fulfill it he will do anything.

Seijuurou was surprised when she entreated him to play with the orange sphere. They had seen passing moments of a match on TV, and she’d looked disgusted at the loud shouts; his father’s expression had been blank, with perhaps a hint of distaste, but he had said nothing. Yet the very next day Shiori seemed to love basketball, so Seijuurou loved it too.

He was naturally good at it, as he was at most other things. But after about six days with the ball he found himself drawn to it not just for her sake. There was something else compelling him, some raw love for the game itself, and Seijuurou gladly embraced it— _ if I can truly love it, I won’t be lying to Mama. _

Five years later, and triumph after triumph falls into his lap. Nijimura-san retires to take care of his ailing father; Seijuurou does not understand why a child must shoulder that burden, but he’s just a little more sympathetic towards Nijimura-san than he was to Kuroko. He knows what it is like to love a father so much that it hurts. 

(Seijuurou loves his mother, so he loves what she loves, and his mother loves her Masa-kun so he loves him too.) 

Seijuurou becomes the captain of the Teikou basketball team. Despite the fact that he knows they will break—because that’s what humans do—he can’t help loving them just a little, or allowing bonds to grow between them and himself. 

_ It’ll break. It’ll break.  _ the voice in his head warns, sounding exactly like Shiori.

It grows fainter every day as Seijuurou finally starts to love his teammates for no one other than himself. 

Then things snap apart, spraying in a hundred directions like shattered glass, and Seijuurou sits there with cuts on his face, Shiori screaming in his head,  _ I told you it would break! _

* * *

He does not remember much of what happened after that. He’d been changing slowly, he knows, but now it’s as if he’s locked in his own head. The new him hurts and pushes away all those he’d come to love; when his doppelganger smiles, it is his mother’s smile. 

It’s only now that Seijuurou realises just how little warmth was ever present in that smile. 

There are matches, too many to count, and victory has never felt so hollow. There are broken eyes and disillusioned faces from their opponents. And then there is the team. 

There is Aomine, putting up a facade of arrogance but all torn up on the inside; Midorima, relentlessly practising despite Seijuurou’s doppelganger’s permission to ditch; Kise, watching Aomine as if the ace will break any minute; Murasakibara, eating sweets and skipping practice—and there isn’t Kuroko, just a form in his wake announcing his retirement from the Teikou basketball club. 

“It doesn’t change anything,” the doppelganger says to the crying Seijuurou, who shakes his head instead.

“No,” he says in a ragged voice. “No—it changes everything. You have to let me back.”

“I can’t. You’re weak. You’re not the man Mama raised me to be.” says the doppelganger with finality, slamming the door of Seijuurou’s jail cell and heading back to the control room, leaving the young boy in complete darkness. 

_ If she raised me to be like him… then Mama didn’t raise me to be a man at all, did she? _ Seijuurou realises, watching as the doppelganger destroys everything that he had truly loved.

_ Mama raised me to be a demon. Like the ones she so hated.  _

_ Mama… hated me.  _

He looks at the marks of purity on his arms and legs, understanding now why they had never felt good the way they should have, and weeps.

* * *

When he finally wrests control back from his twin, it feels—good. Right. Mibuchi, Hayama, Nebuya and Mayuzumi, they all look at him with new respect, and he can’t say he hates it. 

(He feels slightly sick when he thinks about how his doppelganger had treated them. But this is not the time—he must drag Rakuzan to a win at any cost. The fact that his father is in the stands means ~~everything~~ nothing.) 

He plays his heart out, not pulling even one of his punches, but can’t find a single drop of misery or resentment in himself when Seirin carries off a Direct Drive Zone to take the match. The thought of the consequences waiting for him in the stands barely crosses his mind—defeat  _ hurts,  _ but he would rather lose to this team than to anyone else.

The haze of gameplay fading from his mind, Seijuurou is finally able to focus on the five who have just defeated him and Rakuzan. He wants to commit their faces to memory; it is only right to remember your rivals well. 

He knows Kuroko, and Kagami too—the redhead isn’t exactly forgettable. The captain, Hyuuga, has one of those commonplace faces, but the spark in his gaze is too bright to miss; the center, Kiyoshi, also looks like a boy-next-door but for the steel lying under his kind smile. The point guard, Izuki, is strikingly beautiful, something shining out from those features which would’ve been ordinary on anyone else. But as Seijuurou watches him closely, he realises that Izuki Shun is also strikingly familiar.

He’s sure he knows that glossy black hair and sharp eyes and wry smile from somewhere. He just doesn’t know from  _ where. _

* * *

After the game, he goes to his father, pulling the man aside in a secluded corridor just off the main hall. It’s better to accept defeat gracefully and to apologise instead of putting off the inevitable.

“I failed,” he says, bowing. “Forgive me. It was shameful, and not what’s expected of an Akashi. I will do better in my next match, Father, but now whatever punishment you have for me I will gladly take.”

“What?” Masaomi hisses, his voice aghast. Seijuurou raises his head with surprise to look at his father, whose face is wide-eyed and white. “Seijuurou… why would I punish you for losing a basketball game?”

Seijuurou’s lips part in shock. “But Father—I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t the best!”

“ _ What  _ on earth do you mean?” Masaomi whispers, looking horrified. “Do you really think—” He doesn’t finish his sentence. Seijuurou’s breath hitches in his throat. 

“Father… didn’t you always want me to be perfect? Isn’t it only then that you would love me?”

“What?” Masaomi looks lost. “Seijuurou… who told you that?” 

“Mama did,” Seijuurou says truthfully. “She didn’t love me either, but I don’t think she lied to me about this. You’ve never once looked at me, never once—” 

“What?!” comes a new, sharp voice from the end of the corridor. Both Masaomi and Seijuurou snap their heads towards the source of the sound, only to find—

Seijuurou nearly faints when he sees the tall woman from the picture in his father’s study, standing there and glaring daggers at his father. Behind her is Izuki Shun and two other girls, one older and one younger. 

_ That’s why he was so familiar. He’s her son, which means…  _

_ He’s… my half brother.  _

“Sora,” Masaomi says almost to himself. There are tears in his eyes as he looks at her. “ _ Sora. _ ”

“Masaomi,” Sora replies, her face emotionless. Seijuurou looks at Izuki, who doesn’t seem a touch surprised, only furious as he glares at Masaomi. 

_ You knew. You knew and you didn’t tell me. So many of you knew… and you didn’t tell me.  _

_ Why didn’t you  _ **_tell me?!_ **

Then a new, much brighter voice cuts in, “What the hell is going on here? Masaomi, is that you?!” 

Seijuurou, Masaomi, and the Izukis look towards the door to find the other woman from his father’s study, cocking her head and looking at them all in disbelief. Behind her is a short man and a little girl, and, of all the people,  _ Takao Kazunari of Shuutoku,  _ looking just as unsurprised as Izuki.

“Nami?!” Masaomi whispers, his eyes bulging out of his head. “Both of you… you’re not dead?”

_ Does that mean… I’m related to Takao too?!  _

Then tears start to roll down the cheeks of his stone father who has never shown more than a single emotion around him, and Seijuurou’s world comes to a screeching halt. 

_ Why does everyone know except me? Why am I never told anything?  _ is all that he can wonder, staring at his crying father and at the two women—Sora and Nami—both looking intensely at Masaomi.  _ How come I’m always left in the dark?  _

_ How come I’m always left alone? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks sm for reading! Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed~


	5. Sora I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sora's chapter also got super long, so I had to bifurcate it ;w; thank u guys sm for your lovely words!! <3

_When I left you, I left myself behind too, and now I don’t know who I am without you._

* * *

There is, Sora thinks as she observes the woman smiling brightly and hanging off of Masaomi’s every word, something very wrong with Arai Shiori. At first glance, Shiori is harmless. She’s just reserved enough not to appear inelegant, just bubbly enough not to appear icy. And she has one of those kind-looking faces, too, with gentle eyes and a soft smile. But looks only go so far, and Sora is more than skilled at unearthing what’s underneath them.

Sora doesn’t like the way she looks at her and Masaomi, or the way she whispers, “Masa-kun,” like it’s a prayer. Now she doesn’t really care if someone else is in love with her fiance—she isn’t the jealous type—but Shiori’s eyes look like cracked red glass, and Sora is observant enough to see the burn marks all over her skin concealed with heavy makeup. And when she looks at Sora, it’s as if she wants to see her dead on the floor with blood flooding out of her every orifice. 

Sora waits and watches. The mad glint in Shiori’s eyes doesn’t go away, only serving to confirm her suspicions—and what seals the deal is that when they are brought food, Shiori’s gaze lingers on her butter-knife just a second too long. It could be completely innocuous, but Sora’s evidence doesn’t corroborate.

She was wrong. Arai Shiori is _so much worse_ than a jilted rich girl.

_They’re childhood friends, and he hasn’t picked up on how crazy she really is? Masaomi isn’t that stupid… does he know, and is that why he didn’t want me here? She’s a good actress; if I hadn’t been trained to pick up on these signs, I wouldn’t have known that anything was amiss._

Giving her a few hints and leaving her to figure it out for herself is the best option. It’ll buy Sora the day or two she needs to be prepared on all ends for Shiori’s attack—that is, if she even chooses to attack after finding out where Sora comes from. 

Once they finish eating, she has the perfect excuse. Smiling sweetly at Shiori, she asks if the younger would mind showing her to the bathroom, if it isn’t too much trouble? It isn’t an offer Shiori can refuse, and Masaomi can’t follow, either. 

What her fiance doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Sora’s quick to pin Shiori to the wall when they are well out of sight; the girl is much frailer than she looks, and for a second Sora thinks she might have broken Shiori’s wrist. Shiori’s eyes are terrified as she flicks them up and down Sora’s body, apparently trying to figure out a way to get free. 

“Look,” Sora snaps, using every nonverbal intimidation tactic she’s learned over the years, “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, you little wench _._ But don’t think I don’t see the way you look at Masaomi—and at me.”

“I—” Shiori stutters. Sora snorts, her glare growing darker.

“You look at me like you’re thinking of a hundred ways to kill me. What, were you considering hitmen? An ‘accident’, perhaps?”

Shiori’s face turns pale—it’s the confirmation of a confirmation. Sora smiles without a hint of warmth.

“Don’t worry.” she says and lifts Shiori’s hand, placing it on her right hip where her gun rests. Shiori gasps softly as she palms the metal under the blue chiffon of Sora’s sundress. “I know very well how to use that, in case you were wondering. I’ll be safe, Shiori-chan.”

She lets Shiori go, still smiling, and turns around to head back down the hallway. Her mission is complete—she doesn’t think Shiori will be making a move any time soon, if at all. 

The rest of the afternoon passes quickly, and Sora can barely wait to leave. She springs to her feet and bounds out of there, sharing a laugh with Masaomi about finally being out of that depressing house. In the car, though, the mood sombers when she asks the million-dollar question.

“You know what she is, don’t you?” she says softly, staring at the steering wheel.

“I do, and I think I know what you told her, too.” Masaomi says as he looks at the road ahead, his gaze distant. “You didn’t scare her too much, did you?”

Sora sighs and doesn’t reply. 

“I asked her to stop calling me that nickname,” Masaomi continues. “I think it’s best for both of us that there’s some distance… I want to make it clear that…” 

He doesn’t finish his sentence. The rest of the ride home is spent in unusual silence. 

* * *

It’s Masaomi’s fault that they’re here. 

Well, Sora is hard-pressed to find a time when whatever soup they’re in _isn’t_ Masaomi’s fault—but this one could’ve been avoided _so easily._ But no, he took a closed left and argued with the policeman about it and refused to pay his fine and the next minute they were being shoved into a police car and headed to the station. 

(Maybe it was her fault, really. She was the one who’d told him to take that left. But blaming him is so much easier.)

Now, slumped against the grills of a largely empty holding cell in the Meito police station, Sora glares at her fellow prisoner. Masaomi just smiles sheepishly back. 

“This is all your mistake, you idiot,” she whispers angrily. “If you hadn’t _missed taking_ the earlier left, we wouldn’t be here.” She’s so pissed she can’t even make a proper pun. Damn her idiot of a fiance. 

“Um…” Masaomi whispers, “sorry?”

He doesn’t look sorry at all. Sora wants to smash her head into the wall of the cell; she settles for sighing and rolling her eyes. Today of all days, she left her guns at home on her fiance’s insistence that ‘it won’t be a nice date knowing that you can kill me if I say the wrong thing’, never mind that he’s well aware that she knows a hundred ways to kill someone with a plastic straw—and today of all days, they _had_ to get arrested. Flashing those guns embossed with her family’s insignia would have gotten them a straight ticket out of here; even the police doesn’t like to cross her mother. 

The bars of the cell rattle suddenly, and there’s a sound like a lock being opened. Sora’s head snaps up with shock to see her older sister Aya, smiling as she tosses the door to their prison ajar.

“This is quite a _bind_ you’re in,” Aya says playfully, looking at the cuffs tying Sora and Masaomi’s hands. Sora lets out a soft, annoyed click of the tongue and does not look at her fiance as they step out of the cell together; she knows that Masaomi is pulling his puppy eyes right now to get her to forgive him, and if she stares into them she knows she’s a goner.

“And he’s got the puppy eyes on!” Aya says much too brightly for Sora’s liking, her voice just a bit strained, sticking the keys into her sister’s handcuffs and wiggling them around. Sora’s hands pop free and she sighs softly; having your wrists chained is no small deal. “Are you really gonna ignore him, Sora? He looks so adorable!”

“Shut up, nee-san,” Sora grumbles, finally turning her head to look at Masaomi. She regrets it instantly as she receives the full blast of the puppy eyes, her heart melting immediately.

“Sorry…” Masaomi says again, smiling. Sora sighs. 

“I forgive you,” she says helplessly as they walk out of the police station and to their car. The consequences of this, everything her family will say; it’s all written in Aya’s pitiful eyes, but Sora can’t even think of it because Masaomi’s hand is in hers and she feels safe, protected, _loved._

* * *

“You got _arrested?_ Because of that Akashi boy?” thunders her mother a week after the incident, glaring down at her. Sora sits in _seiza_ before her, meeting her gaze evenly and doing her best not to flinch. 

“Yes, Mother,” she murmurs. “It was a foolish mistake. I will not allow it to happen again—”

“No, you won’t,” says Chikako, her eyes glittering, “because you won’t be seeing him again.”

Sora’s mouth parts in shock. Chikako continues coldly, “I shall tell Akashi that we want to terminate the engagement… we have a better offer from Mitsuru Akane’s side, anyway. We’ll see you married to the Mitsuru family’s youngest son within the month—surely you understand why it’ll be a good match?”  
“I—” Sora starts to say. “Mother, I—”

“Akashi Masaomi will be the ruin of you!” Chikako says angrily, true fury flashing on her features. Sora trembles under her mother’s iron gaze. “Mark my words, Sora, you continue to pursue this foolish ‘love’ with him and there will be nothing but _misfortune_ in your life!”

“ _Mother!”_ Sora cries, but Chikako shakes her head.

“This is my final word. Aya, draft our acceptance missive to Mitsuru-gumi, and I’ll check it over.” she says firmly. 

The dismissal is implicit. Sora stands on weak legs and leaves, barely able to believe it. 

_I won’t be allowed to see Masaomi anymore. I’m losing the one person I thought I would never lose._ she thinks numbly, stumbling down the hallway. _Masaomi…_

“There’s an option, you know,” says Aya’s soft voice from behind her. Sora’s head jerks upward, and she turns around to see her sister smiling sadly at her. 

“An option?” she whispers. “I—nee-san, what do you—”

“You could cut ties,” Aya says. “Leave the family. You’re good at this job, but you’ve never liked it. You would’ve preferred to be a banker, a businesswoman; anything but this, right?”

Sora opens her mouth to argue, but Aya shakes her head.

“I know my sister, and I know her heart lies elsewhere. If that is away from this family, then so be it,” she says, putting a gentle hand on Sora’s shoulder. “I want you to be happy, Sora. Even a sky needs an astronomer to map it, and the way Akashi Masaomi maps you—I have no doubt that until his dying day, he will keep finding new stars in his sky. Go to him, Sora.” 

“I…” is all Sora can say. Aya’s offer is something she hadn’t even considered—but now that she thinks about it… it’s entirely possible. She can choose Masaomi over Chikako; choose the one who does not impose his love with conditions over the one who does. “Could I really…”

“Leave tonight, Sora. I’ll tell Mother.” Aya says, her eyes shimmering suspiciously. “Go, now. Grab hold of your love before it’s lost forever.” 

Sora nods slowly. Aya reaches a hand up, parting her bangs, and places a kiss on her forehead.

“I love you. I’ll miss you.” she says quietly. 

“Me too,” Sora whispers, tears forming in her own eyes. 

Aya nods, pulling away, and Sora goes to her room to pack. She takes only what’s essential; clothes for the next week, sanitary pads, guns and cartridges, cash. The computer and phone are slammed with virus after virus to clean their data fully. She closes all her credit and debit cards, even the underground ones she’d used, and spends the rest of the day wiping out any digital footprint she might’ve had. At the stroke of midnight, the Natsume family loses its youngest daughter to the simplest, yet most complex of thieves—love.

Masaomi doesn’t ask what happened when she shows up on his doorstep. He simply gathers her into his arms and kisses her on the head; Sora allows herself to be held and closes her eyes against his chest. 

_Thank you._ goes unsaid. 

“Aya called,” Masaomi explains a few days later, once she’s properly settled into the Akashi household. “Told me everything.” 

“Including that I—”

“Left them for me?” The look in Masaomi’s eyes is warmer than the homeliest hearth. “I know. I love you, and I’m so lucky to be loved by you.”

 _Don’t be silly. I’m the one who’s lucky to be loved by you._ is what Sora thinks.

“I know.” is what she says, tilting her head to plant a soft kiss on Masaomi’s lips.

* * *

She pops the question, ring and all, one month into living with him. They’d been engaged before, but that had been a formal arrangement by both their families. This time, Sora wants it to be something that’s all their own.

Masaomi starts to cry when she offers him the shining diamond. When she asks why, all he says is, “I love you, Sora.” 

This time, she says it back.

* * *

Staring at the small white stick in her hand, Sora can barely believe her eyes. Masaomi’s chin rests over her shoulder, and she can hear his soft sniffles that he’s trying to hide.

Two pink stripes going up and down over the end.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers, half to herself. She can feel Masaomi nodding into her shoulder.

“You’re pregnant!” he cries, jumping up and starting to dance around the room, his eyes sparkling with joyful tears. “We’re going to be parents. You’re _pregnant._ ”

“I am!” Sora says, unable to help the burst of happiness in her chest. “I am. Our baby…” 

She rests a hand over her still-flat stomach and imagines the pulse of life inside her womb.

_I’m pregnant._

“What’ll we call them?” Masaomi asks, bouncing brightly over to her. “I was thinking of Mitsuri for a girl. I really want a girl. I haven’t thought of a boy’s name just yet.” 

Sora laughs. “I know. I don’t mind anything… I’m just happy to have a child with you. But if it was a boy…” She looks down at her stomach and smiles. “I’ve always liked the name _Shun._ It’s rather… genius, don’t you think?” Masaomi lets out a soft snort at the pun. 

“Akashi Mitsuri,” he says out loud. “Or Akashi Shun. I really like both—but of course, it’ll be a girl. Mitsuri sounds better.” Sora shakes her head, laughing. 

“You always love pushing your agenda, don’t you?”

“Guilty as charged!” Masaomi laughs. He seizes Sora by the waist suddenly, spinning her around and kissing her.

“I love you,” he says, pressing his forehead to hers when they pull apart, then pokes her tummy, speaking to the baby that has much growing to do. “And I love _you_ , too, little one.”

* * *

When she calls Aya’s number to inform her of the good news, she receives a dial tone. 

Frantically, Sora tries every phone of Aya’s that she knows. The house number, the outside phone, the personal phone—everything. But she gets no response from any of them.

Shaking, she dials the number she never thought she would call again. The line picks up, and she whispers to the man on the other end, “Where’s Aya?”

“Sora?” asks her brother Sumihiko. “Is that you?”

“ _Where’s Aya?!_ ” Sora hisses, a pit of worry forming in her stomach.

A pause, a sharp inhale of breath. Then Sumihiko replies, his voice cold and flat, “Don’t you know the consequences for betrayal? Mother had her executed. Don’t call this number again, you traitor.”

The line beeps. Sora sits still in shock, phone pressed to her ear.

_Aya’s dead?_

The tears start to roll down her cheeks. It’s not until much later in the night when Masaomi comes to her and puts his arms around her that they stop. She goes to sleep with empty eyes and a heavy heart. 

_This is all my fault. No matter what, I can’t pin this on somebody else._

_This is my selfish mistake._

* * *

It’s not five days later that Sora is getting ready for bed, her back and heart both nearly killing her with pain, when she hears a voice she thought she had frightened off for good. 

“Get away from my Masa-kun, you demon.” says Arai Shiori, stepping out of the shadows that veil the far end of the room, her hand raised. In it pointing straight at Sora’s abdomen, is her own pearl-handled gun. 

_Could she know?! How?!_

Sora stiffens, her hand instinctively going to her stomach. Shiori laughs, high and strained; it sounds like broken glass. 

“I do know, if you’re wondering. I’m aware that you’re pregnant and that you don’t have the backing of your family anymore. You made a stupid move, Natsume Sora… you shouldn’t have given up power for control over Masa-kun. You should have shown him your true, greedy nature.”

“What the hell?” Sora spits, rising. Even if she’s pregnant, her practice against guns won’t go away so easily. She can beat Shiori, if need be. “I love Masaomi. That’s why—”

“Do you?” Shiori says softly, madness glinting in her eyes. “Are you capable of loving _anyone?_ You let your own sister die just so you could latch onto Masa-kun. You knew what would happen to her.”

“I—” Sora starts. “I—”

 _Is she wrong? You knew the consequences,_ says the voice in her head that has been echoing ever since she left her family. _You just chose not to think about them._

Shiori’s eyes are unforgiving as she continues, “No. You didn’t love her and you don’t love Masa-kun. That’s why you’ll leave him now.”

“What?” Sora splutters. Shiori grins, a bloody slash of red lips to reveal too-white teeth underneath, stepping closer to Sora with the gun still pointed at her stomach. She clicks the safety off, her finger pulling around the trigger, and that’s when Sora’s conscious mind understands what Shiori is using over her.

“You can try hitting me. You can try beating me up, and I’m sure you’ll win. But not before this shot goes through your stomach. Not before I kill that—”

“You _wouldn’t,_ ” Sora hisses, her breath catching in her throat. “Even you wouldn’t kill a fetus—”

“Oh, but I would,” Shiori says, smiling madly. “I would do anything for my Masa-kun. And right now, that menas removing your demonic influence from his life. Come now… use those skills of yours to vanish. I’ll even help you by covering your traces! I’m not cruel.”

“You can’t—” Sora begins. Shiori’s finger tightens around the trigger. 

“I’ll stay like this until you get out, and if you don’t…” she says, trailing the threat off. She isn’t fibbing—someone as crazy in love as Shiori will not lie about such things.

“Fine,” Sora whispers, the admission of defeat acrid on her tongue. “Fine.” 

She doesn’t even know why she’s agreeing, but some force within her compels her to pack. She erases her data, packs toiletries and clothes and enough cash to last her a few months, just the way she had left her house—except this time, she won’t be going to another home. 

Shiori keeps the gun trained on Sora’s back as she packs and follows her out the window. She sneaks behind Sora as quiet as a ninja through the gardens, making sure she’s gone.

“I have hitmen all through Tokyo,” Shiori breathes just as Sora is about to climb down the outer wall. “So don’t even try calling Masaomi, because if you do? That baby will be gone, and with the wounds, you’ll be long dead by the time he even gets there.”

Sora hadn’t planned on returning anyway. She doesn’t deign Shiori with an answer, disappearing into the night like a shadow, and doesn’t look back as she leaves the Akashi estate for good. But she thinks, _Farewell, Masaomi—_ and then, suddenly and painfully, _I’ll never love anyone the way I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave me a comment if you enjoyed~


	6. Sora II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! This is the last chapter I'll be posting for a week or two, as I'll have tests soon and need to study. I promise to complete this story, though, by at least mid-Aug!

Life isn’t that hard in the underbelly of Tokyo. Sora changes her family name to 'Izuki' and gets a job as an accountant (thank all those degrees Sumihiko had forced her to get) and an apartment reasonably fast and soon she’s showing heavily enough that her boss—an unexpectedly kind man—gives her leave for the whole week before her due date.

She’s on her morning walk on October the twenty-third when she feels a sudden ‘pop’ around her crotch and fluid gushing down her old trackpants. Sora looks down, praying to every god she knows that it’s just pee—but she knows all too well it isn’t.

“Hosp’al,” says a young female voice next to her all of a sudden. Sora spins, her eyes widening in shock as she spots the thin waif of a child staring up at her. 

“When did you—” she starts to say, but is interrupted by the child shaking her head.

“No’ now. You need hosp’al.” she tells her firmly. “I seen my mama like ‘is with my baby bwuh. Ain’ pretty. ‘Course, that was afo’e she left me ‘ere.”

“Oh,” Sora says faintly, feeling a crushing pressure in her abdomen that renders her legs stiff. “I… right, yes, you’re right. Will you… call…” She takes out the flip phone in her pocket, thrusting it at the girl, who stares blankly at the screen. 

“I can’ read,” she says. Sora snatches the phone back, typing in the emergency number with much effort, then grunts and doubles over as the pressure worsens.

“Come…” she whispers to the little girl entirely on impulse, “with me? I don’t have any family who can… be with me… will you come?”

“To the hosp’al?” the girl asks. Sora nods tiredly, pressure starting to build in her head too. Then dizzying pain shoots up her abdomen, and she whites out for a second—when she returns to the world, she’s grateful she’s still standing. 

“The amb’lan’s here,” the girl says. “I’ll call ‘em ove’.” And she bounds off towards the white van some distance away. It isn’t long before Sora glimpses through her pain two paramedics coming towards her with a stretcher; quickly and efficiently, they load her onto it. 

“What about the little girl? Is she yours, ma’am?” one asks. Sora shakes her head weakly.

“No, but I want her here. I have… no one else,” she says softly. The paramedics exchange uneasy glances; with all her power, Sora summons her most intimidating face and voice and bellows, “I  _ said,  _ I want her with me!”

“Yes, ma’am!” the paramedics say quickly, their faces paling. Sora lies back, her outburst having sapped what little strength she had left, and closes her eyes.

When she opens them next, it is to pain as bright as the blindingly white room she’s in.

“It  _ hurts, _ ” she hisses through gritted teeth as her uterus contracts. “It hurts so much.”

“We know, ma’am. You can do this,” says a nurse encouragingly, clutching her hand. Sora snarls, batting it away—she can’t bear to be touched, especially not now when she feels so tender.

“Mitsuri, Shun, whichever one you are…” she growls, “you’d better come out quick.”

“Are those the names you picked?” asks the nurse brightly. “They’re lovely!”

“Hnnnng,” is all Sora says, her forehead beading with sweat as the contraction passes. “Where the hell is that kid?”

“The child that came with you is waiting outside. Another nurse got her a nice bath and fresh clothes; we judge she’s about five.” says the nurse gently. “She yours?”

Sora doesn’t answer, too busy pushing through pain.  _ Oh, kiddo… you’d better be worth this. _ is her last thought before everything turns to a haze of sound and light.

Ten hours later, she’s holding a small baby close to her chest. The child is swaddled in a pale pink blanket: the nurses inform her it’s a boy. He’s got the beginnings of her straight black hair and wide black eyes that glisten brightly with intelligence. 

“Shun,” Sora whispers, cradling him in her arms. “My boy.” 

“Ma’am,” says the nurse suddenly, “that little girl from earlier…” 

“Let her in,” Sora says quickly. “She’s clean, isn’t she?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” says the nurse, going out the door to retrieve the girl. The person who tumbles into the room is entirely different from the dirty ragamuffin she’d met—when combed, the child’s hair is deep jet-black and hangs halfway down her back. She’s got smooth skin and wide dark eyes, and the same twinkle of mischief shines in them as Sora’s late sister.

“It’s cute,” she says, coming up to Sora’s bedside and peering inquisitively up at the baby. 

“He,” Sora corrects. “His name is Shun.”

“Shun?” the girl repeats. “Shun what?” 

“Izuki Shun.” Sora says with finality. She won’t think about the name that her son might have had. 

“T’s a nice name,” the girl says with a little smile. “You got a home to go to now, baby Shun. Be good ta your mama.” 

Before she can think about what’s coming out of her mouth, Sora blurts, “D’you wanna come too?”

“Come?” The girl stares. “Come where?”

“To my house. I need help with a baby… you said your birth mother had… kids? You can help me… I’ll feed you and give you a roof…” 

“Ya will? Fo’ real?” asks the girl, her eyes wide. 

Sora nods, confidence filling her even as her rational mind screams at her that she’s being crazy. “For real. What’s your name?”

The girl shrugs, looking down to hide the pain clear in her eyes. “No idea. Fa’got.”

_ Aya-nee… she’s just like you. Strong, and kind, too.  _

“How does Izuki Aya sound?” Sora says carefully.

The girl looks at her with wide eyes. “Ya really—I like it, but ya really—”

“Okay, Aya. We just gotta wait a day or two, and then we can go home,” Sora says, smiling brightly at the young girl.

She never makes decisions on impulse, but she can’t help thinking that this one is just  _ right _ . 

* * *

She finds Mai a few years after that day. Shun is four, Aya around nine; they’re coming back home from getting ice-cream when Shun’s sharp eyes spot the abandoned one-year-old in the carton behind a tree. Sora doesn’t hesitate for a second—her job pays well, and there’s no way she’ll allow a baby to die in the biting winter.

Sora makes sure to teach her children everything. She hides nothing about her past from them—not the sordid details of the Natsume family, not the fact that she's wanted in about five countries.  By the time Aya is twelve she can kill a man in five seconds flat. By the time Shun is nine he knows how to disassemble and reassemble a revolver within a minute. By the time Mai is six she can list off a hundred ways to incapacitate someone permanently. 

She tells Shun about his parentage when he is ten. He nods and accepts it calmly, but never looks at the name ‘Akashi Masaomi’ quite the same way. 

Time passes like a leaf fluttering in the breeze, and before Sora knows it her children are all grown up. Aya is a confident collegiate and a part-time dancer heading for a degree in medicine, the spitting image of Sora’s sister with her bright laughter and go-getter attitude; Shun’s making his mark as a debater and an excellent student, and his basketball team is finally starting to soar; and Mai is asserting herself as a formidable force with her piano, winning competitions left and right. She never dates, not the dozens of men (and women) that Aya had tried to set her up with and not anyone else. Not even when _he_ announces his engagement to a woman named Takao Nami, not when Nami too disappears, and not when he finally marries Shiori.

No, Sora's love belongs in an estate a little outside Tokyo, with a man whose heart she broke, and that is where it will stay. 

* * *

The final match is… something. Sora nearly cries with joy when Shun stops the blond Rakuzan boy with as much ease as if he were swatting a fly; that’s  _ her boy,  _ that is. She is surprised to see Shiori’s son on the court, taking down her Shun like it’s no problem, and can’t help smiling to herself when the boy falls. But to her shock, he rises again to combat Seirin—and this time, without a trace of his mother in him. That blazing confidence is all Masaomi, shining like a star as he burns his way to victory.

He fails, though, his power losing against Seirin’s ace Kagami. The joy in Shun’s eyes as he and his team take the podium warms Sora from top to toe, but there’s something broken in Akashi Seijuurou’s face and it makes her feel tingly all over in a bad way.

_ Her son… he’s her son, but there isn’t a bit of her in him now…  _

Her eyes roam over the stands, and catch on one figure, staring down at the court with a mixture of pride and guilt. Her heart stops in her chest and the world slows around her as she recognises him.

_ Masaomi.  _

Sora tears her gaze away with no little effort, ignoring the way her entire body screams to go to him—to kiss and hold him like she used to, to tell him she loved him because she had never done that enough. 

_ That isn’t my right anymore,  _ she says to herself firmly. 

“You did amazing, Shun!” cries Aya as Shun runs towards them, hugging her younger brother. Mai joins in, and after a moment Sora does too, squeezing her children tightly. She’s proud of her boy, so, so proud.

“You were so good.” she tells him warmly. “Great job.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Shun says. “It’s crazy.”

“Crazy _amazing!_ ” corrects Mai. “The way you stopped that lightning guy was so cool!”

“It all really flashed by,” says Shun, smirking. “ _ Kitakore!” _

They all laugh at that, Sora included. Her son is glowing with joy, and she doesn’t tell him off—he more than deserves it. 

As they walk to the exit of the building, planning to get coffee jelly, voices reach Sora’s ears, and one is achingly familiar.

She slows, turning to the source of the sound to find the love of her life and his son in a heated discussion in the corridor near the exit. She stops, her heart drumming a tattoo against her ribs at being so close to him, but forces herself to be calm.

"What? Seijuurou, who told you that?” Masaomi asks in a pained voice.

“Mama did,” Seijuurou replies. “She didn’t love me either, but I don’t think she lied to me about this. You’ve never once looked at me, never once—”

"What?!" Sora can't help it bursting out of her throat, shock warring with fury. 

_ Masaomi never once looked at his son? I know he’s the type to get stuck on heartbreak, with both me and Takao-san, but how could he neglect his own  _ **_child?!_ ** _ What kind of man has he become?! _

Masaomi's face turns to her, wide-eyed and helpless. 

"Sora," he breathes like it's a prayer. " _ Sora, _ " 

"Masaomi," Sora says as flatly as she can, stepping forward. She's about to open her mouth to shoot questions at him when another voice intercedes, "What the hell is going on here? Masaomi, is that you?!”

Sora turns to see a woman with short inky hair held back in a colourful bandanna and piercing eyes that bore straight into Masaomi. She recognises her instantly; this is Masaomi's ex-fiancée, the one, by the look in his eyes when they appeared on TV together, who had started to heal his heart after her. Takao Nami—who’s now happily married, if the ring on her finger and the man and children behind her are any indication.

"Nami?!" Masaomi whispers, his eyes wild. “Both of you… you aren’t dead?”

Tears start to roll down his cheeks. Sora has to hold herself back from going to wipe them—Masaomi needs to answer her. What does his son mean by ‘you never once looked at me’? That isn’t the Masaomi she knows at all. 

“No,” says Nami calmly, “we aren’t. But that’s not important right now… what I’d like to know is why Sora-san—”

“Masaomi told you about me?” Sora interrupts, slightly surprised at the casual name-dropping. Nami shakes her head, smiling.

“I wheedled him into explaining. He loved you, and I think a large part of him still does. You were his first, you know.” 

“Why did you leave?” Masaomi asks suddenly, his voice raw and cracked with pain. Sora can’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “Why couldn’t I find you? Either of you?”

“Maybe,” Sora says in a hoarse whisper, “I didn’t want to be found. Maybe I never loved you. Maybe—”

“That’s a lie, Sora-san,” Nami cuts in sharply. “Both of us know why we disappeared.” 

She turns to Masaomi, her eyes glittering with sadness, and gestures to the boy behind her, who steps forward. Sora’s a little stunned to see that it’s the point guard Shun is so close with—Takao Kazunari. She had suspected… but it would be too much of a silly coincidence, and dark hair and grey eyes were common in Japan.

Or so she’d thought.

“This is my son,” Nami says simply. “Mine and Masaomi-san’s child—Kazunari. And I’m willing to bet that one of those three—most probably Shun-kun—is yours and Masaomi-san’s, isn’t he?”

Sora is about to argue, but Shun steps in front of her, saying tightly, “What’s it to you if I am or not, Takao-san? I’ve been to your place a couple of times, but you never said anything then.” Nami shrugs. 

“I suppose I didn’t want to scare you off. I didn’t learn it from Kazunari, if you’re wondering; I recognised you because you look exactly like your mother.” Shun’s shoulders relax a little, but he stays in position between Sora and Masaomi as if protecting her. 

“What  _ happened?”  _ says Masaomi again in a frail voice, tears still flowing down his cheeks. But Sora’s eyes catch on Seijuurou, who is looking from person to person with a lost expression on his face. 

“That’s not what matters right now,” she says, her lips moving involuntarily. “I burst in because I wanted to know why Akashi-kun said that you never once looked at him,  _ Akashi-sama. _ ” Masaomi doesn’t miss the use of the overly formal honorific; his face whitens further, and he licks his lips.

Nami’s eyebrows rise high on her forehead. “He said that?” she asks in a deceptively calm voice.

“Yes,” Sora confirms, staring daggers at her ex-fiance. “I’d like Akashi-sama to explain himself, if he would deign to do so for a lowly commoner like me.” 

“Sora, I—” Masaomi tries weakly. “I never—”

“You never glanced at  _ your son, _ ” Sora continues ruthlessly, her love for Masaomi quashed under utter outrage at his actions. “You never gave him the attention he deserved from a father.”

Masaomi quails under her harsh gaze, his lips moving soundlessly. Sora looks at Seijuurou, her eyes boring into crimson ones that are completely Shiori’s and yet nothing like the dead woman at all.

“Tell me, Akashi-kun,” she says in a kinder voice. “Why did you say that?” 

Seijuurou’s face drops. “It’s fine,” he says softly. “I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself. Please don’t worry about these matters—it’s between me and my father, and we can resolve it.”

“Will you? What’s my guarantee that if Takao-san and I turn around and walk away, you’ll continue this discussion with him? That you’ll tell him everything on your mind?”

She has no idea why she’s defending this child so harshly. Maybe it’s because she’s appalled at Masaomi for it. Maybe it’s because of the residual guilt—if she can’t do anything for Masaomi, at least she can do something for his son.

(Maybe it’s because Shiori was broken long before she met Masaomi, and what’s left of Sora’s conscience doesn’t want to let her son break too.)

“I…” Seijuurou says softly. “It’s not your concern, please. It’s too personal—” Sora snorts, cutting him off midway.

“Personal! I know almost everything about your father. I was engaged to him at some point. Is that personal enough for you?” she says flatly.

Seijuurou’s mouth forms a shocked ‘o’. Sora softens her expression again and asks, dropping her voice, “Akashi-kun, can you please tell me why you said that?” 

“I…” Seijuurou looks stricken. “I… because…” 

“Because?” Sora prompts gently.

“Because… it’s true.” Seijuurou looks at the floor. “Father… he has never once given me more than a passing glance. He’s even flinched at me sometimes.”

“He’s  _ what?” _ repeats Nami in a low voice seething with anger. She looks up at Masaomi, vibrating with fury—in that moment, even the seasoned assassin in Sora wouldn’t want to be near her. “Masaomi-san, is this true? Did you actually flinch at your own  _ son?  _ What did he ever do to you?!”

“He…” Masaomi breathes. “He… Seijuurou, I never meant—you just, you look so much like—”

“No way!” Sora interjects fiercely, the same fury as Nami welling within her alongside disbelief. “You didn’t.  _ You didn’t.  _ You didn’t neglect your own  _ fucking  _ son just because he resembled your crazy wife!”

Looking into Masaomi’s terrified eyes, however, she knows. He has never been able to lie to her, and people like him—however cowardly they can become—don’t change in these things. 

“How could you?” Sora whispers. “How  _ could  _ you?”

Masaomi looks at her, guilt and fear swimming in his brown eyes, and does not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave me a comment if you enjoyed!


	7. Nami I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I'm back!! I wasn't originally super into this chapter tbh (Nami's already got her priorities straight LMAO unlike dear "let's-ignore-this-problem-until-it-goes-away" Sora) but once I started writing the words just flowed. This chapter is mostly backstory (and the last one that'll really have that much backstory) and the next will be all drama uwu  
> Thank you guys for all your amazing comments! They just made my day <3

_I drifted like a lonely raft on the ocean until I found my shore—and I was lucky enough to reach it not once, but twice._

* * *

A seedy, run-down bar is where Nami meets her first love.

He’s sloshed and clearly trying to forget someone. She just wants a good night out. Two plus two makes four, so they spend the wee hours of the morning in the love hotel opposite the bar. She doesn’t really think about him for a few weeks after; she’s had better, to be honest. 

Then she misses her period, a pregnancy test shows up positive, and she marches straight back to the bar to find him. 

It’s a long shot, she knows. But if she’s pregnant, she has to discuss the options with the father of the baby. She won’t allow her child to grow up without a father—but if he refuses to support her, she may have to abort. She cannot support the cost of raising a baby on her meagre office-worker income.

By a stroke of sheer luck, she finds him hunched over a drink, staring moodily into it. Still hung up over that woman whose name he’d called that night, she assumes, but there’s no time for that now.

“What’s your name?” she asks matter-of-factly, tapping him on the shoulder. He looks up, startled—and as she looks closer, she realises what she hadn’t in the drunken haze of that night, that his face is vaguely… familiar.

“I—what?”

“What’s your name? I’m Nami.” she repeats patiently. He stares at her with empty brown eyes for ten full seconds, then says quietly and lifelessly, “...Masaomi.” 

The name sends a chill down Nami’s spine as she recognises it, and exactly why he looks so familiar. _Masaomi…_ she has seen this man on TV, talking in a quiet voice about business and his plans for the future. He was engaged to a woman named Sora before her mysterious disappearance— _that’s the name he called_ —and he’s currently the most eligible bachelor in Japan.

 _Akashi Masaomi_ is the father of her baby.

Nami’s about to pass out from shock when Masaomi asks, “Are you… alright?” 

She blinks— _did he just talk to me_ —then collects herself and answers him. 

“I’m fine. Just… I didn’t… I…” she trails off. She doesn’t know how to say it. Is there a way to tell someone you’ve grown up watching through screens and hating for his wealth that he fathered your child? 

That’s when the light of recognition sparks in Masaomi’s eyes. “You’re the lady from the other night. And you know who I am, don’t you?”

Nami nods. Masaomi sighs softly. 

“What do you want?” he asks. “Money? Give me a figure. A job? Not a problem. Just… tell me, and then leave me alone, please.” 

Nami scowls, anger filling her at his assumptions. She isn’t the kind of woman who likes extorting people—she believes in honest work. The rage renders her silent for a few moments before she remembers why she’s here.

“No,” she says eventually, quelling her fury as best she can. “None of those things. I—when we slept together… I’m not saying this was either of our faults, we were both drunk and—well…” 

“Well?” Masaomi prompts dully. Nami swallows, suddenly nervous.

“I’m pregnant and it’s yours,” she blurts as quickly as possible. Masaomi looks at her, his eyes bewildered.

“You _what?!_ ” he half-shouts. 

“I’m pregnant,” Nami repeats with a little more courage considering she’s already got it out once, “and it’s yours.”

“I… _mine?_ Are you sure?” Masaomi asks softly. “You aren’t just—” 

The rage bubbles back up, this time bursting out of her, and she cuts him off vehemently, “I’m not that kind of woman! I’d much rather climb up the ladder with my own achievements than be born with a silver spoon in my mouth, or to extort others for it! Hell, I’m only here because as the father of this child, you get equal say in what happens to it!”

Masaomi’s lips part in shock, and his eyebrows fly high on his forehead. Bravado filling her, Nami sneers, “What? No one ever talk to ya like that before, rich boy?”

“No…” Masaomi murmurs faintly, his gaze fixed on her but his eyes faraway. “Sora… Sora did.” Nami raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t comment. Rich people...

“Anyway,” she says, “can we discuss this more in private? I’m not that well off, so I need you to pay child support if we choose to keep the baby.”

“I—” Masaomi looks a little dazed. Nami clicks her tongue in impatience—she doesn’t have time for this. She grabs a napkin and a lipstick that someone left on the counter and opens the tube. 

“What’s your personal number? I don’t want to be redirected through five hundred different idiots and told I ‘can’t speak to Akashi-sama because I don’t have an appointment.’” 

Masaomi blinks, but gives it out anyway, and she quickly scribbles the digits down on the napkin with the lurid purple lipstick. (It’s rather a nice shade, actually—she’ll have to check the brand and save up so she can afford it). 

“345720181?” she repeats to check. Masaomi nods.

“I’ll call you in the afternoon tomorrow?” she offers curtly. Masaomi dips his chin, looking a little out of it.

“I… yes. That would be… I’m free around two…” he says weakly. Nami gives him an unsmiling thumbs-up and walks out of the bar, not wanting to spend another minute than she has to around some spoiled rich boy. 

* * *

Surprisingly, Masaomi wants to keep the child. Nami doesn’t understand why, but she’s on board with it as long as he’s willing to raise the baby with her. Not as a partner to her, but as a father to his child. 

He also wants to get engaged to her. Nami refuses staunchly at first—she doesn’t believe in true love, but she refuses to marry someone like Akashi Masaomi who has everything fall straight into his lap without an inch of hard work. However, his parents seem to think she’ll go to the press despite her repeated protests that she _will not_ sink that low.

It’s only when they offer to pay off her student loans in full that she even considers accepting it.

Those loans didn’t come cheap, and Nami has never been sure if she’ll ever be able to repay them completely. But this… it’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer. And Masaomi’s parents attach with it a promise that if the marriage doesn’t work out, separation is always an option. It’s tempting—Nami’s this close to accepting it, yet there’s some trace of pride holding her back.

It’s only when Masaomi convinces her to meet his parents that she is sold.

The Akashis are nothing like what she expected them to be. They hold the meeting in a fast-food place (Mari something or other). They talk to her in simple language and honest voices, treating her as if she were an equal—a friend, even. Their earnestness shines through when the father pleads her to marry Masaomi if only for the sake of him having a companion.

In the end, she doesn’t do it for that spoiled brat. She does it for his parents, who are so heartbroken by the very thought that their son might be alone forever.

* * *

When Nami moves into the Akashi house, she doesn’t quit her job.

She doesn’t do it for a multitude of reasons. While the Akashis might be extremely nice, she doesn’t trust any wealthy person not to suddenly cut their support off, and she’d better have backup for if they do. She also needs to get out of this creepy giant mansion, so dark and lonely that she wonders how Masaomi even has the summery tan he does. She needs her freedom; here, the servants call her ‘Takao-sama’ or ‘Young Mistress’ and it’s the weirdest thing she’s ever heard. At her office she’s just regular old Takao who’s always early and drinks all the coffee in the coffee machine and does half of her boss’ paperwork.

Masaomi asks her about it one time. She fixes him with a flinty glare and does not answer. 

She will never let herself get close to—or God forbid, fall in love with—some rich kid.

* * *

Sixteen weeks into the pregnancy, she thinks it was almost too easy to fall for Masaomi. 

It goes all too slow and all too fast, creeping up on her like a ghost. It starts with the little things—getting up early to prepare coffee by hand for her, talking to her and the growing child in her womb instead of spending his evenings crying over a picture in his study, trying to get to know who _she_ is instead of who she will be to him once they are married (they don’t rush it because ‘it would look bad to announce engagement and marriage so quickly’). 

Nami starts opening up to him bit by bit, telling him about how she’d always dreamed of being a successful businesswoman. About how she likes men and women equally, about her college days where she’d been absolutely wild, about her job and lazy boss. 

And bit by bit she learns about him too. He tells her about Sora—about how she was his first love, about how different from Nami she was and yet how similar, about how he will always love her even if he does find someone else. He tells her about how his parents cut him off after high school, and he had to secure a college scholarship on his own. How he stayed in a run-down apartment in America and took three jobs to stay afloat, how he came back to Japan and worked his way up from the very dregs of his mother’s company to stand as her right hand today. 

It changes her perception of him entirely, and Nami looks at him with new respect.

She doesn’t realise when that respect turns to love.

They confess to each other four months into the engagement. Not like shy school-children announcing their first crushes, but calmly and in half as many words. He takes her hands in his one day, looking into her eyes, and when she sees only her own reflection there is when she understands. He can love Sora to the end of eternity, but now there is room in his heart for her, too. 

She smiles and leans forward to kiss him. It’s their first real kiss, and it feels like heaven.

* * *

November the fourteenth, a mere week to her predicted due date, and Nami’s so excited she can barely breathe. 

It’s going to be a boy. Masaomi looks slightly disappointed, having wanted a daughter, but he puts it behind him instantly. They end up choosing Nami’s preferred name, ‘Kazunari’, despite Masaomi’s repeated complaints that “Akashi Kazunari sounds terrible!”

Now, Nami sings softly as she walks up to their room to take a nap. It’s some English rock song that she’s too sleepy to recognise; Kazunari likes loud and fast music, Led Zeppelin and Queen and Pink Floyd, the same bands Nami will swear by to her dying day. Masaomi thinks it’s ridiculous, preferring his boring old Beetle-oven’s sonatas (or was it Bath Oven? She can never remember it for the life of her) and turning up his nose when Nami plays ‘We Will Rock You’ on her secondhand Walkman.

Nami enters the room, sighing with relief when her eyes fall upon the bed. She’s just about to lay down when a voice cuts through the air.

“I don’t think you want to do that, Nami-chan.”

Nami freezes, spinning around slowly. In the corner of the room, veiled by darkness, stands a slim and short woman with long, straight red hair. She’s immaculate in a black suit, with perfect skin and manicured nails, but there’s a light in her eyes that isn’t quite right.

“Who the hell are you?” Nami says warily, stepping back. The woman comes forward, the light from the hallway illuminating her face. She smiles widely, looking rather like a _kuchisake-onna._

“My name is Shiori. And you are in my rightful place.”

“What?” Nami asks, arching an eyebrow. “Rightful… place?”

“As Masa-kun’s fiancee and bearer of his heir,” explains Shiori matter-of-factly. “I’m his future wife. Not you.”

It all falls into place suddenly. Nami lets out an exasperated sigh, raising her eyes to heaven.

“You’re his jilted ex-girlfriend, aren’t you.” she says flatly. “Come to threaten me into leaving? It won’t work, princess. Now shoo before I call security on ya.”

“Won’t it?” Shiori asks, tilting her head and staring innocently at Nami, who frowns. “Does this change your opinion?”

She takes a step back, placing her hand on something in the corner, and pushes it forward to reveal a monitor on a low table. Spinning it around, she clicks a switch; the monitor’s screen flickers to life, and on it—

Nami gasps, her legs weakening as the scene fully computes in her brain. On their knees are her family, guns pressed to their temples by various henchmen (save for her aged grandmother, who’s got a knife to her neck instead). Her little brother is crying; her grandmother’s face is still and unyielding; her mother looks at the floor; her father’s eyes glisten with terror.

“I just have to say the word,” Shiori whispers, “and they’ll be _gone,_ Nami-chan.”

“No. _No._ ” Nami breathes, terror forcing the words out of her mouth. “What do I need to do? Don’t do this, please, I’ll do anything—”

“Anything?” Shiori asks. “Anything at all? Anything like… leaving Masa-kun and never coming back?”

Nami stares at her, half-disbelieving, half-horrified.

“You _wouldn’t._ ”

“I would. As Sora-san learned, and as you are too.” Realisation, icy cold, sinks into Nami’s bones at Shiori’s words. 

_That’s what happened to my predecessor. She got chased out of here by this lunatic, and now I’m being chased too. I can’t give this up without a fight—what’s the chance she’s just lying and that this is faked?_

Her brother’s face is clearly visible on the monitor. The tear tracks on his cheeks catch the light, and more flow down as she watches. The gun digs further into his temples; his lips move in soundless prayer. That is when Nami truly understands.

_No. This isn’t fake. No one, least of all Asahi, can express that kind of fear if it isn’t real._

“Fine,” she says, and the admission tastes like ash in her mouth. “I’ll start packing.”

Shiori smiles, sharp as the knife being held to Nami’s grandmother’s throat.

“Glad we could come to an understanding.”

* * *

Nami would like to say she doesn’t look back. She’d like to say that she put her family over a man she knew for nine months. She’d like to say that when Kazunari is born, she does not think about the name he should have had. She’d like to say she never dreamed of Masaomi at night, dreamed of a nonexistent life with the first person she truly loved. 

She would like to say these things, but she doesn’t make a habit of lying to anyone, least of all herself.

* * *

She moves to Hokkaido, gets a new job that actually pays decently. It’s there that she meets Haruki, at a company party a few months later. Kazunari is too small for these things, but no one is home and attendance is compulsory; so she brings him and she regrets it every second. From her coworkers’ questions—“I didn’t know you were married!”, “How old is he?”—to their judging looks when she explains Kazunari came from an affair, to the child himself, who won’t stop crying, disturbed by the lights and sounds as he is. The one saving grace is that no one recognises her as the same Takao Nami who was engaged to Akashi Masaomi. Granted her picture had been kept out of the media for the most part, and she’s using contact lenses now, but it’s still a little shocking that no one connects the dots. Mostly relieving, though.

Then Haruki sidles over to her. She doesn’t notice him for nearly ten seconds, since he only comes up to her elbow. It’s his soft voice that makes her jump five feet in the air, unexpected as it is. 

“Can I help? The child seems disquieted.” he says gently. Nami turns, face white. 

“I—” she begins. “I—”

“I’m good with babies,” he explains, holding out his hands, as if that’s supposed to fix everything. And normally Nami would have given him a disgusted face and left, but she’s tired and cranky and hasn’t slept in two weeks and she _needs a fucking break._ Without thinking, she hands Kazunari over—

Haruki cuddles the baby to his chest, his face melting into a fatherly expression. Within a minute, Kazunari is sound asleep.

Nami has never been more grateful in her life. She thinks she might have cried a little.

(Haruki likes to say she did. She doesn’t think he was entirely wrong.)

At the end of the night, after another few soothing sessions from Haruki, Kazunari’s out for good. Before Nami leaves, he catches her arm, his face nervous as he asks for her number.

Nami mulls over it for a minute before deciding, _What the hell._ She doesn’t want to be single forever… and he seems like a genuinely good person.

She gives him the number. From that point, there’s no looking back.

* * *

Haruki is everything Masaomi was not. He’s short and plump and just as poor as Nami (though their jobs are starting to pay better). He’s awkward, without any of the easy charisma Masaomi possessed, and rarely ever smiles… yet Nami feels his love with every cell of her being. She sees it in the way he holds her hand when they’re at a movie, in the way he doesn’t allow her to do any of the cooking at night because he knows how much her job takes out of her. Kazunari starts calling him ‘Dad’ in six months—Nami doesn’t complain, and neither does Haruki. 

They date steadily for the next two years, eventually moving in together. She didn’t think she’d ever forget about Masaomi, and she doesn’t. But Haruki takes up a bigger place in her heart now, and Nami starts to think they were meant for each other. When he proposes, she thinks she might explode with joy. The ring is small and simple, a little gold band that Haruki says with some embarrassment will have to double up as the wedding ring; Nami couldn't care less.

They are married in a small ceremony, just them and their families. Coincidentally, she and Haruki have the same surname, so nothing needs changing. Nami is happier than she ever thought she would be. 

A year later and Kazunari has a younger sister, Yui. A year later and life is finally settling into place, Nami’s future clearly marked out in front of her. 

A year later and she finally stops thinking about Masaomi every night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave me a comment if you enjoyed it!!!


End file.
